


A Shieldshock Coffeehouse Fic

by tobinlaughing



Category: Captain America (MCU), Darcy Lewis (MCU) - Fandom, MCU
Genre: Espionage, Gen, ShieldShock - Freeform, Tumblr Prompt, coffeehouse, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 10:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13005837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobinlaughing/pseuds/tobinlaughing
Summary: Prompt at the top: from Tumblr user swingsetindecember: "when an international spy gets the wrong intel and strikes up a conversation with an informant, but it turns out the other person is just normal.  they aren't a spy. they're just having coffee when this well-dressed stranger quoted some pop-culture reference and they couldn't help but answer because, like, it was so obvious. "Darcy's sure she's seen the tall blond at the counter before, but she's not gonna waste time trying to figure out where. Steve's just trying to put the lid on an op and make a rendezvous with an informant. Hey look, a coffee shop.





	A Shieldshock Coffeehouse Fic

Steve had been jumping from danger to distress to emergency for pretty much his whole life, and yet he had to give credit where it was due: he’d never been quite so nervous as at this very moment. Knees jammed into the back of the seat in front of him, feet braced as best he could against the sticky floor mat, and trying not to crush the door frame or the oh-shit bar too tightly, lest his super strength warp either out of shape, Steve grit his teeth against another wild overcorrection as the rickety hatchback made its way down the street. 

“Here we are, man,” his Uber driver announced cheerfully, yanking the steering wheel to the right and jamming his little hatchback into the curb. Steve relaxed his grip on the oh-shit handle, imagining that he could feel the overtaxed tendons in his hand creak after the harrowing twenty-three minute trip across the city. “Hey, give me a couple extra stars on the app, huh? The better rating I get the more rides I get!”

Steve glared at his driver in the rearview mirror, knowing that the driver couldn’t see him; he grunted something approximating a civil farewell and scrambled out of the car as fast as he could. The hired hatchback jerked out of its ad hoc parking spot as soon as he was standing on the curb, squirting out into traffic without benefit of turn signals or probably without the driver looking around for other cars. Blaring horns trumpeted its progress towards the next intersection.

Sighing heavily and briefly counting his blessings, Steve looked around: the coffeeshop was familiar, a place where he’d met his handler on a few occasions for a mission brief or debrief. This time would be a little different: he was meeting an informant, not his handler, and trying to close the loop on one of the many items on his to-do list for this mission. The coded greeting running across his brain, he pushed open the door. 

_Late twenties, glasses, curly brown hair_. The description Nat had given him could apply to about half of the patrons of the coffee house and to both of the employees visible behind the counter. Mindful of the giveaway that was his scowl, Steve schooled his expression into one of bland nonchalance and stepped into the order line (thankfully the woman in front of him was blonde and balancing an equally towheaded toddler, of indeterminate gender, on one hip. That eliminated exactly one possibility from the...twenty three others in the coffee shop).

 _The signal will be something Jane Austen-related_ , Nat had told him. When asked for further clarification, his newest handler had only shrugged. _Look, Steve, this one’s skittish and flaky. I know it’s not a lot to go on but we have to show good faith and try to make contact, ok?_ She’d made a show of flipping through this informant’s files, scanning for anything that might make identification easier. _Glasses. Actual visual-aid glasses, not hipster frames without lenses. My gut says female, but I’ve never been able to 100% confirm that._

The girl behind the counter was someone he didn’t recognize from his previous visits, and he felt the faint stirrings of hope when he saw the pouffy, messy bun her walnut-brown hair had been scooped into. She looked to be the correct age--although the early-century gentleman he’d always wanted to be cringed at the idea of asking a strange woman her age--and, as if to cement the deal, she was squinting at her register over the tops of her glasses, trying to thread the receipt paper. He could see the distorted image through the lenses--they were real--and, as he drew closer to the counter, her nametag became legible: **D A R C Y** , printed in bold block printing with what looked like zigzags of lightning drawn around the name. 

Relief eased the knot in his stomach and Steve decided he was actually going to order a drink. 

“Be with you in juuuust a tic, handsome,” ostensible Darcy told him, still attempting to pull the register tape through the rollers. “Victory!” She crowed a moment later, pushing a button on the side of the box and sending a reel of paper spooling out of the printer. She turned the flashbulb-bright grin on him and asked, “What’ll it be for you, dude?”

He returned her smile easily, relaxing a bit more in the warmth of her smile. It was a nice smile: pink-glossed lips stretching over even teeth, and crinkles of genuine amusement making her blue eyes sparkle behind the telltale glasses. “A large mocha, please and thank you, Miss Darcy.”

“Oh, aren’t you sweet,” Darcy replied, tapping the screen in front of her. She looked up at him, really looked, and her smile flashed again. “Anything else I can get for you? Cookies, a danish, something to go with your mocha?”

“Just the coffee, thanks,” Steve said, and added, “ but I wouldn’t say no to extra whipped cream.”

“You got it.” 

Steve forked over the cash for his drink and reached just a little further than necessary when she handed him his change, so that his fingers brushed the underside of her wrist. Her eyes widened, then narrowed suspiciously at the unasked-for contact, and before she could protest out loud, Steve said, “And I like your shoelaces, by the way.”

She gave a little gasp--a tiny intake of breath--at hearing the coded greeting. “Thanks,” she replied warily, and added slowly, “I got them...I mean, I stole them from the President.”

“Sweet.” And it was sweet. Probably the easiest, clearest contact he’d ever managed, and with almost no good info to go on at the outset: his informant was right where he needed her to be, had given the correct countersign (and she was a civilian, no doubt, so he could overlook the slipup in his official report), and once she’d given him all the info she’d called this meeting to divulge, he could close the book on this chapter of this long, convoluted mission. 

“Yeah. So, I’ll, um, bring you your mocha as soon as it’s ready?” Darcy said, nodding at the counter that ran along the far end of the shop. Steve flashed her another smile and went to pick a seat. 

(Darcy handed off the drink ticket to Romero at the espresso station and slipped one hand into the pocket of her apron for her phone. Turning her back to the empty counter for a second, she swiped open the tumblr app and pecked out a quick post: _Just got the slightly awkward but Official Tumblr Greeting About Shoelaces at work. IDK who you are, currently-anonymous tumblrite for whom I must now make a mocha, but good on you for having the gumption to try it out_. She tagged it _#hit up my asks if you want to not be anonymous_ and _#ngl you’re pretty cute_ , then added _#that’s just a factual observation not a come on or a pickup line_ , before deleting the second tag and hitting “post”).

His was the last drink that Darcy the Informant delivered on her rounds, and Steve appreciated the casual ease with which she made the drop off and then found the excuse to hang around his end of the counter, flashing him another one of those winning smiles.

“So you have an opinion on the Construction Project?” Steve inquired, stirring the fluffy mound of whipped cream into his still-steaming mocha.

The girl eyed him sidelong, and for a moment Steve feared he’d been too forward in asking about the Project so directly. Flaky and skittish, Nat had told him, and what does he do? Jump in with a classified codename and practically bulldoze a potential font of information--

“Yeah, I guess,” she ventured finally. “I mean, they’ve been working on the corner here for years, it seems. Like as soon as one thing gets finished, something else needs to get torn up or torn out or torn down.” She didn’t look at him directly, instead focusing on scrubbing an imaginary stain out of the countertop with the towel she was using. 

“Must be nice, having the kind of revenue to be able to afford all that….Labor,” Steve kept his tone neutral, trying to parse the information as she gave it to him. Torn up, torn out, torn down: that phrasing was important. Up, out, down. Torn. Torn Torn. Up, out, down….

“Construction’s the fastest growing job sector in the city,” Darcy replied, evidently satisfied with the polish on that section of countertop. “And it’s nice for the guys, they stop in almost every morning. The construction workers, I mean.”

“Infrastructure’s a good bellweather for the local economy,” Steve offered, hoping that the number of coded words in the sentence wouldn’t throw her off. This was good stuff; this was very good stuff. 

“Gentrification at it’s finest,” she answered, not missing a beat. Steve hoped this meant she was relaxing into the flow of conversation a bit more, maybe coming around to the idea that he was trustworthy. “Drive out the generations who’ve worked their ...butts off to build up and stay in this place, then kick ‘em to the curb so the new money hipster skinny white kids can open their st...silly scarf emporiums and bistro hookah lounges.” 

Darcy nodded out the storefront windows, at the garishly-decorated awning of a tobacco shop across the street. Steve looked, then turned back to lock eyes with her for a significant moment. Darcy raised one eyebrow slightly, as though daring him to challenge her information. Steve didn’t, choosing instead to take another slow sip of his mocha (it really was good, especially with all the extra cream stirred in). 

“Darcy,” called the other aproned barista, jerking his chin at the register; Darcy gave Steve an apologetic smile and excused herself to help the new customers standing there. Steve mulled over what she’d told him, giving long thought to an angle he hadn’t considered before she’d suggested it. Minutes stretched by and he sat, sipping his mocha contemplatively and composing his mission report in his head, until Steve realized that his mug was empty and the cafe was much more crowded than when he’d first arrived. He glanced around for his informant and happened to catch her eye as she called out orders at the counter; Darcy gave him a wry smile and half-shrug, handing off a coffee to go. 

Right. Informant or not, this was still her day job, and she didn’t just have to make it look good for anyone watching them; she still had to earn a living. MOst informants expected some kind of compensation for their time and information. Darcy’s involvement in the Construction Project investigation had come with a volunteered tip to a whistleblower hotline; still, Steve would want to talk to her again, and figured a token of appreciation might make her a little less enigmatic the next time. Concealing his hands under the counter, he wrapped a $100 bill in a ratty $1, then tucked the cash under his empty mug. Darcy was looking at him again; he risked a conspiratorial wink her direction, then stood from his stool and strolled casually out of the bustling coffee shop. 

(In the corner farthest from the register, a twiggy-looking kid, clad in painfully skinny jeans and a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies t-shirt, watched Steve hold the door for an incoming patron on his way out, wondering if such a ridiculously obvious all-American GI-type could have actually been the secret agent he was sent to meet. Nervously he brushed the overlong hair away from his lensless glasses, then hunkered further down in the coffee shop’s only armchair, where he’d been waiting since the shop opened. Did he dare risk going to the bathroom? He’d finished his gut-boiling extra-dark colombian triple-shot two hours ago, and his bladder felt like it was pressing against the bottom of his ribcage. But of course, bitter irony whispered in his ear, as soon as he got up to go to the restroom his contact agent would waltz through the door…)

“Was that dude bothering you?” Romero, her barista-back, would ask her later, after the noon rush had died off. “I saw him wink at you before he left.”

“Not bothering, really. Just kinda awkward,” Darcy hedged, rifling through her apron pockets to clear out the pens, straw wrappers, change, and other debris she’d whisked out of sight during their busy period when there’d been no time to actually wipe down the counters. She produced a fistful of wrinkled bills and shuffled them for inclusion in the tip jar--then gasped as Ben Franklin’s face uncurled from the shadow of his buddy Washington.

“DuuuUUUUUuuuuuude,” Romero whisper-shouted, poking her in the shoulder. “Duuuuuude!”

Darcy batted his hand away. “This has to be a mistake, right?”

“You mean that has to be from tall, blond, and awkward. See how he rolled that money together? He didn’t want anyone stealing it before you got there.”

Darcy felt her face heating up. “You can’t know it was him.”

“Come on, girl. He was practically undressing you with his eyes for a solid hour. You actually talked to him, like conversation-sentences and everything. Who else do you think would have given you a freaking hundred-dollar tip today?”

“Ugh, way to make it creepy,” Darcy pulled a face. “I think he’s been in here before. I dunno, maybe he’s...someone, you know? A celebutante or something. He gave me the Tumblr salute, he should’ve seen me reblogging that ‘don’t hit on people at work’ post a million and a half times.”

“Never not reblog,” Romero agreed. “Hey, maybe he did just really like his mocha. You put about a hundred bucks’ worth of whipped cream on there anyway.” The younger barista paused, then added, “Wait, did he really ask you about your shoelaces?”

“He did indeed,” Darcy confirmed. Glancing at the clock, then around the shop, she keyed in her register code to open the drawer and started counting out change.

“What are you doing?” Romero asked.

“We’re both gone in forty-five minutes, and you know Mister Beard-in-a-Hairnet’s gonna troll through the tip jar as soon as he’s clocked in,” Darcy answered, her fingers flashing through tens and fives. “You made the mocha and I provided the scintillating conversation; no one else gets a cut of this tip. Seventy-thirty sound fair to you?”

“Uh, how about fifty-fifty, beeyotch!” Romero crossed his skinny arms over his skinnier chest and pouted at her, but still accepted the trio of tens she smacked against his shoulder. 

“Seventy-thirty, kiddo,” Darcy growled. “Age, brains, and getting my tits probably mentally groped for an hour beats out however good your milk-steaming skills might be.”

“Yeah, okay, tits staring wins,” Romero sighed, tucking the money into his back pocket.

__  
Project CONSTRUCTION  
Report: Informational Exchange  
Date: [Redacted]  
Location: [Redacted]  
Informant: Codename DARCY 

_Report Prepared By: Steven G Rogers/ Codename CAP/ Agent 07041776_

_Agent arrived at predetermined meeting location in publicly-hired transportation (see Expense Report # [redacted] for verification) ten minutes prior to meeting time. Informant gave very little information regarding identification, but positive contact made using preference for Jane Austen references._

_Coded greeting and correct countersign given._

_Informant confirmed that Project Construction is ongoing despite our efforts, although there have been signs of change within the ranks of financial backers, which in turn are pushing interest and efforts into new areas within the city._

_Informant indicated [redatcted] as possible money laundering site; possible other illegal business happens at address. Informant also mentioned ‘gentrification’; possible coded reference to new investors in Construction who may be looking to expand business or impress current legacy backers._

_Informant touched on ‘scarves’; may be reference to garrotte killings last month in lower Midtown._

_Unwilling to risk Informant’s cover, Agent exited venue at approximately 1 hour after entering. Approved gratuity left on counter. Observation of venue for 90 minutes after exit; no suspicious activity or persons detected._

_END REPORT_  
[encl: expense report  
Receipts] 

Cheese and rice, but Darcy hated Clopenings. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the coffee shop believed in regular-people hours, but her bosses had recently decided that early and late had equal value in the city’s estimation, and so here she was, filling the espresso hopper a mere six hours after she’d emptied it for the night before. Four a.m., Darcy decided, could Suck It. 

It took her a minute to realize that a trio of police cars, lights only, had sped in mostly-silent succession down the street in front of the shop. No one else was out in the predawn gloom, but after another moment or two another trio of vehicles, this time showing no lights at all--not even headlights--crept down the street. Another minute, and another trio of cars, still lightless; then another minute, and another group of lights-only squad cars. Dafuq? Darcy thought to herself, and threaded her way out from behind the espresso machine to cup her hands against the shop’s front window and peer out into the darkness. 

The intersection nearest to the shop was blocked off with vehicles and what looked like a million riot-geared officials swarming around them. No one would be coming through that intersection with that many people and cars there. Darcy pulled her phone out of her apron pocket, firing off a quick text to her boss, then remolded her hands around her face to watch what promised to be an epic drama unfold out the window. 

In the end, it was almost anticlimactic: sure, there was the made-for-TV lineup at the front door, the waved hand signals and crouched runs to cover all possible exits, but in the end a big dude in a helmet shoved his way in, and about twenty minutes later came out with some struggling guys in sweatshirts and raincoats, handcuffed and escorted by, Darcy assumed, the cops who’d gone around the back to cover the exits. And then it was mostly over: about half the squad cars and unmarked vehicles maneuvered their way out of the intersection, usually with someone handcuffed in their backseat, and drove off, while the rest of the vehicles repositioned themselves to much more polite parking spaces along the sidewalk, and the CSI trucks came trundling in. By then Darcy’s boss had texted her back and she had permission to open the doors late; most of her morning regulars were, in the end, okay with the delay: it meant they had an excuse to cluster near the front windows with their steaming cups and rehash the little bits of information they’d been able to glean about the morning’s events. 

Noon--and the end of her shift--approached with the speed of a public figure admitting wrongdoing; that is, with agonizing sloth and a total reluctance to get to the point. She used Romero’s arrival at ten as an excuse to stick him behind the register while she dealt with the morning’s accumulation of dishes and trash and her boss--who’d appeared around 7:30 to get the scoop on the apparent SWAT raid on the hookah lounge--to sling espresso and pastries and gossip with his customers. By 11:45 the kitchen was looking less like a pile of health-department citations waiting for an inspector, and Darcy was pouring the last of the buckets of icky cold coffee-sanitizer-water down the drain. Romero stepped through the door with a full bus tub just as she was wiping her water-wrinkled hands on her soaked apron, and she groaned.

“No, hey, don’t worry about it,” he assured her, making a beeline for the dish machine and starting to stack cups and plates. “Aerickah just showed up so I’ll take care of this one and she can play smiling barista for a minute. You ok? You’re outta here, right?”

“Yeah, should be,” Darcy blew out a sigh and glanced at the crooked wall clock above the big industrial coffee pots. They were chugging along merrily, brewing the next batch of “just plain black coffee, please” that’d be put out at the counter for the self-serve customers. “I didn’t get a break this morning; you think boss-man will let me go early?”

“Shiiiiit, what time did you get here?” Romero demanded, hands on hips. “You opened, right? He should have let you go at eleven.” Sucking his teeth, he slung a wad of soaked paper napkins into the nearby trash can.

“I’ll deal,” Darcy replied. “Not like it hasn’t happened before.”

“Well hey, make the dude who tipped you the hundo buy you lunch. He’s at the end of the counter and I think he’s been lookin’ for you.”

Mingled excitement and dread fought for dominance in Darcy’s empty stomach: on the one hand, her personal superhero (as she’d christened him in her head) was pretty godsdamned hot. And there’d been the hundred-and-one-dollar tip. On the other hand, her years as a barista--at this place and elsewhere--had shown her more than her fair share of creeps, jerks, entitled dicks, and coffee-counter stalkers. She blamed movies and TV for giving the basement-dwelling mouthbreathers of the world the idea that it was ok to sexually harass the barista at the corner coffee shop. And if Super-Tip ( _ugh, **oh God no** , that couldn’t be his superhero name_) had already gotten the idea that he was sugar-daddying his way into her pants, she was probably going to have to ask Romero or her boss to walk her to the train station again for the next couple weeks. 

“He didn’t...say anything, did he?” Darcy asked.

To her relief, Romero shook his head, the quadruple-sets of rings in each ear chiming against each other as he did. “Not that I heard, no. Just kinda keepin’ to himself. I think dude actually brought a book with him. He’s just been checking out the counter every once in a while.”

“Okay.” Darcy self-consciously patted her hair and tried drying her hands again, then gave it up as she realized just how much dishwater had soaked into her apron. She shucked the apron, hanging it on her peg next to the broom closet, and went back out to the front to clock out. 

“Darcy!” Darrin, her boss, beamed at her and looked for a second like he was going to give her a hug--then seemed to remember his own strict no-on-the-clock-contact policy, and turned it into a wide-armed and enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Think we can get the cops to raid that place more often? We’re gonna be in everyone’s livestream, I know it! Talk about free advertising!” 

“I’ll do my best, boss, if you promise to send me a second barista-back for those mornings. When Gwinneffyr texted and said she couldn’t make it in for the roadblock, I thought I was gonna die.”

“You got it, kid. Hey, seriously though--” Darrin leaned against the pastry case and folded his arms. “I’m proud of you for how you handled this morning. You did everything right, with letting me and Kelly know what was going on, and then you kept the store running by yourself. Nobody’s come up to complain about a long wait or a mixed-up order. You done good, Darcy. I know you didn’t get a break today, and I’m sorry. Can I get you something to go?”

Darcy glanced around the cafe, and to her relief (and a tiny sliver of disappointment) didn’t see any big hot blond guys lurking near the counter. “That’d be great. Do we have any of the stuffed croissants left?”

A few minutes later Darcy shouldered her way out the door, hands full with an extra-large trip-shot mocha and two of the sweet gruyere-ham-and-apple stuffed croissants in a pastry box. The sunlight was almost blinding, and New York was out in force, stalking its lunch across the sidewalks.

He stayed a careful half-block behind her on the way to the train station and a subway car away from her on the ride to her apartment, but Steve was finally satisfied that his informant was in no danger of repercussion from the morning’s raid once she was safely inside her building and locked into her own apartment. Agents were watching all of the informants and sources who’d contributed to the latest Construction Project raid, as well as the suspects they couldn’t yet bring in; Darcy’s protective detail would be in place for the next week, watching her to and from work and around the city without her having the slightest idea. He didn’t, strictly speaking, have to tail her home personally. He just wanted to be sure she was safe. 

The phone in his pocket buzzed and he pulled it out to read a text from Natasha: _lunch date, on you. Not optional. Extraction in T-3. ;)_

“Following a girl home when she hasn’t exactly asked you to do so is bordering on creep behavior, Cap,” Nat commented when she’d screeched to a halt at the curb a block away. “You’re not getting sweet on your informant, are you?”

“Just covering bases,” Steve sighed. “She gave us the big tip. Be a shame if something happened to her.”

“Last time I looked, second base was for the second date,” Nat eyed him sidelong, easing out into midday traffic. “Was the baseball metaphor a thing when you were dating? YOu know, in your prime? Or do I have to explain what the bases are?”

Steve sighed and made a face at her. “I thought you were done trying to help my love life along. At least, I was hoping you were done.”

“It’s a constant and frustrating work in progress,” Nat smiled. 

Thus the drive passed, and soon enough they were out of Midtown and into Morningside Heights. Nat’s choice for lunch was a quiet little hole-in-the-wall place that Steve suspected never filled more than half of the tables crammed into the narrow dining room, but he was pleasantly surprised by the sheer volume of lasagna that appeared before him when their orders were brought out.

“You know you’re my favorite, right, Steve?” Nat asked, apropos of nothing, about halfway through her own enormous plate of seafood pasta. Steve blinked, swallowed, and reached for his glass. 

“Your favorite what?” he asked cautiously.

Nat shrugged. “Pick something. Favorite agent--”

“Shouldn’t that be Clint?”

“--favorite Avenger--”

“Pretty sure that’s Dr Banner.”

“--favorite sparring partner--

“I know for a fact Tony’s a lot more fun to throw around than I am.”

“--favorite lunch buddy--”

Steve shrugged, smiling a little. 

“--my point is,” Nat concluded, “that in any given situation, you can be sure that you have my full support and appreciation behind you. Which is why this is really hard for me to say.’’

“Did you bring me here to break up with me?” Steve clutched his napkin to his chest, calling up every episode of every telenovela Tony had shown him during their brief cohabitation with the other Avengers in the Tower. “Here? Now? In this place I’ve never been, and you with the car keys? How am I supposed to get home, Natasha?”

His handler rolled her eyes and flicked an olive at him out of her otherwise-decimated salad. “Stop it, you drama-dork,” she smiled, much to Steve’s relief, then sobered. “No, and I had to double-back and check myself, because it’s not something I would have believed of you, Steve. But it looks like a fact’s a fact, and the fact is, my dude, that you got the wrong guy.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Steve said carefully.

“Your informant in the coffee shop? Not actually an informant.”

Steve blinked. “But....”

“A young man was shown to my office today,” Nat said, reaching to her side and the purse that sat on the chair next to her. She drew out a manila file folder. “He was in hysterics. Hell, if my pants were that tight I might panic too, but--anyways, he was babbling about protection and his rights and freedom of speech. I thought he was going to have a stroke right there.” She flipped the folder open to reveal a color photo of a young man with an unkempt mop of dark curls, glasses that Steve could tell were fake even in the photo, and indeed, jeans that looked to be painted on. “He said that he’d kept his mouth shut after my agent had failed to make the rendezvous, and shown good faith, so why weren’t we protecting him? Did I have any idea what kind of hell his life could be if no one stepped up, now that the hookah bar was gone?”

“But-- but Darcy!” Steve whispered. “She gave the counter-sign! Brown curly hair, real glasses, and the Jane Austen reference!” He narrowed his eyes at Natasha. “You said yourself that there wasn’t a lot of info to go on with this informant. I followed procedure.”

“You did,” Natasha confirmed, “and I’m not trying to punish you for it. In fact, your Darcy gave us good information that led to the arrest of a dangerous group of individuals. But she was never meant to give you that information, and I doubt that’s the information she was trying to give you at all.” 

Steve put his head in his hands, the half-plate of lasagna almost forgotten. “So what happens now?” he asked, without looking up.

“Now, we take the real informant into custody, and you get all the dirt you can on your assumed informant,” Nat said, returning to her plate of pasta. “And you stop beating yourself up for a mistake that wasn’t really a mistake.”

“I just don’t see how…” Steve trailed off, then looked sharply at Nat. “Is she HYDRA?”

“You think she’s setting you up.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m not always inconspicuous, Nat. None of us are any more.”

“You tailed her to her apartment. What else do you have on her?”

Steve didn’t say anything; he just dug his phone out, unlocked it, and called up a few photos before handing it across the table. At the first photo, Natasha almost choked on her pasta.

“No, it’s fine. It’s all fine, Rogers. Shit.” Nat wiped her mouth, flicked through the photos for a second, then handed the phone back. “I’m guessing you never met Dr Foster, did you?”

“Dr Foster? Thor’s Dr Foster? No, I never did. Why?”

“You can stand down, Cap. This Darcy--your Darcy--is also _Jane Foster’s_ Darcy, which means she’s also _the_ Darcy who took down Thor with a taser.”

Steve gaped.

“Once Jane Foster decided she didn’t want to work with Stark’s money anymore, she ended things with Thor and took her research team with her. Her intern ended up being HYDRA. Ian Malcombe, his name was. As I recall, Darcy called Clint to take care of him.”

“Hawkeye killed the boy?” Steve was wearing his patented Rogers Face of Disapproval.

“No, he removed him from Foster’s lab and turned him over to MI6 on espionage charges. I think Darcy probably voted for his sudden, inexplicable, and messy death, but he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. To them, at least. He had a whole lot of information on Tony’s funding and how he was handling his resources; Clint turned that into corporate espionage and crimes against the Crown, for which our friends in Scotland thanked him mightily.”

“No, Lewis is as clean as they come, and as loyal as a hound dog to Dr Foster,” Nat finished, picking up her fork again. “Either close your mouth or put some lasagna in it, Steve, or I swear I’ll steal your food,” she added, and Steve closed his mouth with an audible snap. 

“Foster’s sick, isn’t she?” Steve asked quietly after a few more bites.

Nat nodded and swallowed. “Breast cancer. Stage III. Refusing both Thor’s help and Helen Cho’s.”

“Good Lord, why?”

“Pride, I suppose. A mistrust of anything having ties to Stark funding, for sure. Probably more than a little bit of that desire to have nothing more to do with the huge mysteries of the multiverse. Beyond that?” Nat finished the iced tea in the bottom of her glass with a dramatic sucking noise through her straw. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“So what happens now?”

“Now, your erstwhile would-be informant goes undercover and gets a protective detail. Probably Bishop or one of her line. He’ll be relocated, of course, and compensated for what would have been a key role in the ending of the Construction Project. Your Darcy continues on as she has been. I know that at one point, Heimdall was looking in on them at Thor’s request.”

“Any word from Thor?”

Nat gave him a _look_ that would cut glass. “No,” she answered finally, “no word from Thor. No sign of Loki, either, which I suppose is more of a no-news-is-good-news situation. She's safe, you know.”

“I...what?”

“Darcy Lewis. She's seen her share of weird shit and dealt with SHIELD. If you got her number, asked her out…”

“Creeping Jesus, Natasha.”

“I'm just saying!”

***

He had to go back and ...well, not check on her, exactly. Nat was right; Darcy Lewis would have enough protection--otherworldly and otherwise--that his interference, or lack thereof, wouldn’t make any difference. And besides--she wasn’t actually his informant. There was absolutely no reason to worry about her getting targeted by any of the groups he was watchdogging, because they probably had no idea she existed. 

But he had to go back. Nat’s smug rejoinder about Darcy’s status as ‘safe’ ran around and around in his head until he could believe that it was printed on the undersides of his eyelids. He’d looked her up that afternoon in SHIELD’s database, read Barton’s and Nat’s notes on her, studied up about the New Mexico Incident, the London Incursion, and Darcy’s strange proclivity for turning up and bailing Erik Selvig out of jail in whatever region of the globe he happened to get caught with his genius flying in a regrettable state of undress. 

Clint had had a slight crush on her, he was sure; Nat’s tone of voice in her notes was one of bemused admiration for Darcy’s guts and impulsiveness. One of her concluding statements after the London Incursion was that any and all natural disasters that included Darcy Lewis would probably have originated with Darcy Lewis; added into any situation, Darcy would represent an unpredictable element of chaos that could either save the day or cost a lot of people their lives. “So that’s what you mean by ‘safe’, huh?” he muttered, gazing at the coffee shop from across the street.

A gentleman did not stalk a lady at her place of employment, no matter what modern sitcoms and rom-coms would have one believe. Steve turned on his heel and walked west. He knew enough about her habits now, he could contrive to meet her elsewhere, elsewhen, and….not apologize, exactly, but…

Godammit, Nat.


End file.
